2016 Mazda Mazda6 Pros and Cons at TrueDelta: Owner Pros and Cons by Bernard46

Fuel economy

The fuel economy on this car is pretty good in my opinion. Its a petrol automatic and if I do half a tank of fuel on Motorways with the speedo at 80 - 85 and the rest of the tank around town I will see 40 MPG. I don;t think one can complain too much about this. If I do all short journeys and no motorway mileage I can probably get around 35, which again is pretty good.

Quietness

Its not the quietest of vehicles in my opinion - I'm comparing it with a 15 year old Volvo S80 though. Basically its not too bad although you do tend to hear things being thrown up from the road a t times - a bit strange because they sound as if these things are hitting a very thin piece of metal ( I can't figure out where this might be since there seem to be fully covered in wheel arches - these sounds do not occur everyday but are strange when they do happen. However the most annoying things from a sound perspective are the roar from the twin exhaust (why do they think it is necessary to have a sporty exhaust - this is a large family saloon, not a racer) when acelerating, and also it is difficult to hear the built in satnav when cruising at motorway speeds ( 70 - 80 mph) - it seems that the satnav only 'speaks' through one speaker (the drivers door) and that it is struggling to make itself heard over the general road noise (without the radio playing).

Front seat support & comfort

Why doesn't this vehicle have heated front seats (they only cost a tenner or so at manufacturing time) and why doesn't it have electric front seats with memory (it is particularly annoying to have to try and reset the seat after the garage has had the car and adjusted it to their liking)! Again electric front seats don;t really cost anything much to build in.

Audio & nav systems

Well on this vehicle the satnav (which is very expensive - twice the price of a top range Garmin or Tomtom) is a heap of rubbish. Firstly it did not work when delivered (the satnav did not know where the car was). It took three trips back to the garage for them to fix it and it was only on the third trip they agreed to replace the unit. Then 6 months later after I had updated the maps (not sure if this was a coincidence) it started to fail for a couple of days - would not load maps (then it fixed itslef and tha garage looked at it but didn't find anything - I got the usual "updated it to the latest level" rubbish. Then a couple of weeks later it dropped dead again - this time it would go into a loop saying "loading navigation" and then flashing up a map with no roads, and then back to the message - it would keep this up for 2 hours! The garage said there were no codes logged!!!! Really - its worse than Windows. Then the service manager pushed the factory reset button and it came back to life - they had it in for another day and again I was told it had been brought up to the latest level!!! So no faith in this at all. It also suffers from a wierd entry procedure for setting up you destination. It measures altitude in yards!!! Who on earth does this? It thinks the fastest distance is the way the crow flies so you find yourself trekking down all sorts of narrow country lanes and then having to reverse to avoid massive tractors - I kid you not. It seems to have lost a lot in the translation from the Japanese.

Tires

Why is there no spare tyre? The space saver is hideously expensive - if you don't get it you get a can of gunk which will certainly destroy your tyre meaning every puncture requires a new tyre, and it may not solve your puncture problem. In addition the spare wheel well is not large enough to accomodate a full size steel spare (in the UK this costs about ?95 including tyre and wheel). Why not - a genuine spare would cost Mazda ?50 at the very, very most and everyone one would buy it.

Driving position & visibility

The driving seat position is fine but the visibility can be an issue - the A pillars are pretty thick and the wing mirros, despite being very big boxes, are not too wonderful in terms of the view they provide. In addition the darkened rear windows really should be abandoned -let people who really want these dangerous things pay for the installation themselves. A reversing camera (which is not standard) is a muston this type of vehicle because of the high rear window line and the large pillars - in addition thevehicle should have better adjusted reversing lights (mine has only one - why?) so that they do not dazzle the camera at night.

Controls and instruments

Why do Mazda put important warning lights behind the rev counter needle - for instance the tyre pressure warning light is immediately behind the normal position for the rev counter needle so when you hear an annonymous bong and start looking for something you don't see it without taking your eyes off the road for a dangerous period! Also when you get the same annonymous bong and you start looking at the dashboard why is it that it is the low temperature (at 4 degrees C - a bit high isn't it?) a white snowflake-like symbol appears - why isn't this yellow as a warning against all the other normal white lights (not a good colour for dash board lights, by the way- go for green like volvo), and why does it not go to red when you get down to zero? Having had a Volvo for 15 years I'm all in favour of 24 x 7 lights ALL ROUND - not just the front lights - the auto lights feature is no use given that it doesn't put the rear lights on in the daytime - and if you don;t use the autolights feature you have to manually turn down the instrument and satnav lights when it does get dark - surely you can do better than this. Finally there is nothing wrong with a few knobs in a car - have you tried adjusting radio stations etc while driving - its almost as dangerous as texting on your phone (actually its just as bad) - Mazda need to put in 2 or 3 knobs for the basic tuning controls - thank god there is one for volume.

Interior styling

You can have any colour as long as its black!!! Why? Black is the most awful colour in a car - it is guaranteed to show up every mark, hair and speck of dirt - and I don't own a dog! Also why make the seats (and especially the floor mats) of a material which resolutely clings to every hari and morsel of dirt. The only way to clean this vehicle inside it with a pair of tweezers or very long fingernails to pick out the bist and pieces that cling like limpets to the upholstery and carpets/mats. By the way it does not come with mats as standard either - why not - how much do these cost I ask? I quite like the spaciousness and confort inside.